Life as I Know It

May 30.

Today is some little boy’s birthday.
Today a couple friend is celebrating their wedding anniversary.
Today a friend will bury and say his final goodbye to his father.
Today some careless boy is going home leaving behind a hurting friend.
Today someone woke up with a fleeting feeling of elation for a crush’s passing attention.

May 30.

Surely a little angel is born.
Somewhere, someone might be getting married.
Someone is wistfully smiling at the end of a summer fling.
A little boy or girl is eagerly anticipating his/her first day in school.
Most likely, a lot is feeling this is just another day so much like yesterday and the day before.

Whether today is extraordinary or not…
Whether today marks a new beginning or a painful ending…
Whether today you are happy or not…

Today is just one day that you truly have.

Grieve if you must.
Party if you can.
 

If you are sad and lonely, take comfort…
If you are happy, relish each second because…

…all of these won’t last.

After being tagged for weeks, I finally got around to doing mine.  So I finally hit #25.  I thought I can come up with a lot more than 25 random things that will make an interesting person out of me.  Turns out, I’m wrong and that making the list it’s quite a task. 

Sharing my random 25 on FS… 

1. I am Medusa.  Mine is the stare that kills.  Fierce!
2. I between drinking and smoking, my poison of choice is alcohol.
3. I am a stage Tita.  I have 2 nephews that I absolutely love.
4. I was a beauty queen in high school.  Twice!  Ugh!!!  Embarrassing I know.
5. I have 2 college frustrations.  One is UP Rep and the other is…
6. I am a barrio lass.  Always was.  Always will be.
7. I am a keeper… of friends, secrets, grudges.  Beware.
8. I know nothing about music.  I’m just easily influenced
9. I get mad and I get even.
10. I know my way around the kitchen.  I learned how to bake when I was 5 years old.  My mother taught me how.  Anyone heard of the “wonder oven”?
11. I love my job as much as I hate it.
12. I am a java addict.  I prefer my brew rich and strong.  But I never tasted coffee until I was in college.  When I was a kid, Mama used to say “if you drink coffee, you will not grow tall”.  And I actually believed her then, coz she drinks and she’s not tall. 
13. Banana is my favorite fruit.  It makes me happy.
14. During our practicum in college, my group mates called me “mamahen”.  By now, I have been called by so many variants of the term already – nay, nanayste, mamaste, mother, etc.  I don’t know.  Seems like a have a knack of picking up “kids” as I go along in life.
15. I have eight bestfriends.  Without whom, I would never have made it this far.
16. I have already picked my funeral picture.  One moment in 2002 frozen in time.  Me, happy with life and my cosmopolitan
17. I hate NOT having my own place.  I hate renting.  After high school, I lived in a dorm, a boarding house, an apartment, a condo, a ghetto.  Whether shared or solo, renting always sucks!  I suppose that’s a cancer trait?  After all, a crab can’t live long without it’s own carapace.
18. I have faith.  I realized there was noone I can depend on but God when I had my surgery in 2000.
19. I am a dog person.  My current babies are Kulit the dachshund and Ally Mcbeagle.  As a kid, I grew up alongside an endless line of royal askals.
20. I am like my mother, much as I don’t want to admit it.
21. They say your strength is your weakness as well.  Mine is my family.
22. I love reading as much as I love dvd movie marathons.  My box’ treasures are books and a motley crew of original and pirated VCD/DVD’s. 
23. I have all sorts of stress related disorders:  MVP, insomnia, GERD, and CTS.  Wonder what else I’ll pick up as I age.
24. I am possibly “gifted”.  I learned to value my gut-feel.  I have weird dreams.  I know I need to “run” when I feel funny.  And I learned to bite my tongue when I have murderous thoughts.
25. I am a hopeless romantic, still.

while most people are into the christmas countdown, i’m barely managing to breathe in and out.  like i need a brown bag, 24/7!

what to do in a shit and fan situation?

i have no fucking idea…

paper bag please….

That day, I decided not to love him anymore,

nor think of him or look him in the eye.

That day, I decided to quit even without starting,

even without knowing the prospects of love,

even without feeling his embrace.

That day I decided.

How does he kiss, I do not know.

How does he love, I will never fathom.

That day, I decided to stop loving him

without knowing why.

My friend Kenneth wrote this.  If I were writing this, the difference would be the last line.  Because I know.  And I would have been playing My Almost Lover in the background.

It’s not about running away.  It’s about good judgement.

I have been thinking, is it so bad to die young?

I hear the crying.  I hear the sighs.  I hear the laments.

I have been thinking, what would her life be had she lived to be an old woman?

Who would cry then?  Would she be missed as much?

I have been thinking, how do you measure a full life?

I have been thinking, when is it ever ok to die?

Rest in peace Jo.

I recently went back to the habit of leaving the radio on to keep me company until I finally doze off. In that state halfway between sleep and conciousness, I keep hearing this song for several night. I’m bad at lyrics but it played often enough I got the lyrics right enough to be able to google it

Described as a hauntingly beautiful song…

It is.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCeS-yorGtc

Here’s my top reasons why a DVD marathon of Sex and the City when you’re bored and alone is not a very good idea L

1)      The shoes and clothes overload.  Envy is a sin.  But my golly!!!

2)      The happy hours can really make you thirsty.

3)      The sex makes your dry spell so much worse than it is.

4)      The dates, bar pick ups, and chance encounters makes you think of a long series of test runs before you get it right.  Or still be wrong anyway.

5)      Knowing that the girls all had their happy endings in the movie makes you want to skip all the other loop holes and just go direct to the happy ending.  But which makes it sadder coz

a.       It’s how reel and real life unfolds.  No shortcuts.  The sting of mishaps and misfits made SATC a hit.  In real life, that’s just the way it is.

b.       Real life can be too far from screenplay.  You might not have your happy ending inspite of.  Maybe you’ll just end up settling.

6)      You still end up taking notes of lines that kind of have some piercing effect.  Words of wisdom from a sitcom?  Hmmm

7)      It sucks to relate so much, with no girlfriend to slap you back to reality.

8 )     The weekend just slipped by and you realize your tired and still sleepy coz you watched thru the night.  And you’re thinking “what the fuck! Tom is Monday.”

and yet again.  it’s nearly 4am.  i couldn’t lie still so i took myself to my cyber refuge.  what have i missed?  the new friendster blog lay-out.  i like this better with the archive enhancement. :)  naks naman!

Yesterday I unearthed my old blog entries. It was not my intention to make an appraisal of my life. I did not feel the need for that. Not now when I am still too preoccupied with the leaving of the boys and my questionable state.

But the thing is, what I read upset me. I was horrified that the tone of my blog hasn’t changed at all. The emotions are so raw it can only be construed as current. How disappointing to note that over the last 3 years, I have been blabbing about the same angst and pains. It’s like time passed but I got stuck.

I may be a hardcore emotera but I will never allow myself to be a loser. So what gives? What have I become in the last three years? In print, it may not look much. As previous contents of this blog reveals, it’s been mostly full moon episodes with an excessive doze of frustrations, heartbreaks, betrayals, disappointments, longings, what could have beens. Ugh! How pathetic. But what can I do? I have the habit of digesting the painful. That’s my way of coping. If I am able to get it out, it tells me I’m getting better. This is why this blog sounds like a depression therapy session.

But I need to remind myself that I am not a loser. In fact, I’m one tough survivor. Yes. I am that person. So I’d like to take stock to the triumphs I have over the past 3 years. This is me counting my blessings so to speak

• There’s nothing I love most than my family. In the end, nothing counts so much as blood. And the little one where I belong hasn’t been spared of trouble. We survived an annulment! It’s been as dramatic as soap operas go. Complete with all the ingredients - buckets of tears, heartbreaking lies, a spell of cold treatment, painful batterings, catastrophic holidays, and so on. It was a very slow recovery. It may not even be called a recovery. It’s more of coping. It’s not without difficulty. Every one of us has paid a high price. The best description to our family now would be unconventional. However, I will always pray that we will all get to that level where we will be a lot happier and at peace than we are now. The sooner the better.

• I have seriously given my Tita role the bestest shot there is. And I will always be that way with the boys. I’m happy that I have been a constant in probably the most turbulent moment of their lives. Over the years, I realized there’s very little that I will not do for them. The phrase “choking with emotion” was as real as the endless tears. I was goddess of waterworks for days. It broke my heart to see them go, not knowing when I will be seeing them again. And it breaks my heart again to think of all the little things that I will miss in their absence. But they were never mine. And they have every right to be with their mother. And yes, they deserve to venture on the new possibilities that their new life offered. It will not be as fulfilling to watch them from the sidelines, but I will make do for the meantime. I will put it this way, they will always be my main motivation for getting a US visa. I never really cared for one before. I cannot live without one now.

• I loved. I lost. I loved again. And then I lost again. And did it the hole 9 yards so to speak. The smiling silly while texting. The cooing on the phone. The blushing over roses and stuffed animals. The trysts. The insecurity over a day’s silence. The crying over frustrations. The spying. The break-up. With one relationship, I thought I found the one I want to grow old with. Maybe I did. I loved him enough. But it wasn’t meant to be. I nearly self-destruct. It took one drunken mistake to pull me back to my senses. But after all the tears are spent, there’s comfort at the thought that finally I can lay to rest my biggest adolescent what-if. That the one that got away, has gotten away for good.

• I am likely to fall again. If I’m being truthful, I’d say I already have. I’m quoting from one of my favorite movie:

  “… I had my heart broken badly by someone that I really loved. But I think your heart grows back bigger, once you’ve got the shit beat out of you. And the universe lets your heart expand that way. I think that’s the function of all this pain and heartache that we all go through. You gotta go through that to come out to a better place.”

  And that’s how I see it too. Friends will tell me, I’m older but none the wiser. Most likely true. But can you really have love any other way? In my dictionary, it can’t be love if it’s any less maddening. Inspite and despite everything, I am still a believer.

• I made progress at work. I have matured. I made peace with the people who didn’t like me and I didn’t like in return. I’ve learned how to concede without sacrificing my beliefs. I know what I want. I know what makes me happy. I know the price I’m willing to pay for what I want. I’ve grown really good at what I’m doing (sometime to the point of being arrogant – this is bad). I’ve tested my limits. And there is still so much more that I can do.

• I have a bigger treasure trove of marvelous friends. I have new friends, the kind that I want to keep for life. Though some of my bestfriends have gone to live far from me, I have met and forged new ties. In the same way that these people have imprinted on me, I have probably left my mark on them as well. My luck with friends is still as before. I form strong bonds. That is always wonderful.

• I am financially more responsible. I am debt free. I have paid off the biggest debt I’ve accumulated. Although I have depleted the little savings I made. I’m getting started again. I have already paid for preparations for my own death (hahaha). I have another that is not so morbid. And I have built a fence.

• And I have two lovely dogs to my name

“Time passes. Even when it seems impossible. Even when each tick of the second hand aches like pulse of blood behind a bruise. It passes unevenly, in strange lurches and dragging lulls, but pass it does. Even for me.”

And now it feels like I’m on a fresh start.

"Be with someone who knows what they have, when they have YOU."